Composition & Essay Writing [ 21 ]

21- ] Composition & Essay Writing .

14-] The Problem Of Over-population .

                   Over-population is a condition where an organism’s numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. In common parlance the term usually refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment – the Earth .

                  Over-population does not depend only on the size or density of the population , but on the ratio of population to available sustainable resources and on the means of resource use and distribution used by that population . Over-population can result from an increase in births , a decline in mortality rates due to medical advances , from an increase in immigration or from an unsustainable biome and depletion of resources . It is possible for very sparsely-populated areas to be over-populated as the area in question may have a meager or non-existent capability to sustain human life . Over-population places competitive stress on the basic life sustaining resources leading to a diminished quantity of life .

               At the dawn of agriculture about 8.000 BC the population of the world was approximately 5 million .From around 800AD onwards the growth was slow but steady . The faster growth began from the start of the Industrial Revolution around 1700AD . The number of population was estimated about one billion in 1804 . In 1939 it was approximately 2.3 billion. In 2009 it was over 607 billion . By 2050 population is forecast to carry on growing to 9.5 – 11 billion . World population is currently growing by approximately 74 million people per day . Almost all growth will take place in the less developed regions where today’s 5.3 billion population of underdeveloped countries is expected to increase to 7.8 billion in 2050 . By contrast the population of more developed regions will remain mostly unchanged at 1.2 billion . The population of 51 countries or areas including Germany , Italy , Japan and most of the successor states of the former Soviet Union is expected to be lower in 2050 than in 2005 . During 2005-2050 nine countries are expected to account for half of the world’s projected  population increase : India , Pakistan , Nigeria , Democratic Republic of the Congo , Bangladesh , Uganda , USA , Ethiopia and China listed according to population growth .

                       With the imbalance growing between population numbers and vital life sustaining resources , humans must actively conserve cropland , fresh water , energy and biological resources . There is a need to develop renewable energy resources . Humans everywhere must understand that rapid population growth damages the Earth’s resources and diminishes human well-being . Many of the minerals that we need for a variety of products are in danger of running out in the near future . A large expansion of agriculture to provide growing populations with improved diets is likely to lead to further deforestation , loss of species , soil erosion and pollution from pesticides and fertilizer run off as farming intensifies and new land is brought to production . The structure of the world’s ecosystems changed more rapidly in the second half of the 20^th century than any time in recorded human history and virtually all of the Earth’s ecosystems have now been significantly transformed through human actions . The objective of this is not to present a dark and gloomy scenario , but an urgent call to action .

                    More than 100 countries now import wheat and 40 countries import rice . Egypt relies on imports for more than 40% of its grain supply . Just 6 countries supply 90% of grain exports – US , Canada , France , Australia , Argentina and Thailand . The US alone supplies almost half of world grain exports . Hunger and malnutrition kill nearly 6 million children a year in Africa . In sub-Saharan Africa the number of malnourished people grew to 203.5 million people in 2000 – 2002 . Nearly half of India’s children are malnourished according to recent government data .

                  Agriculture has displaced one-third of temperate and tropical forests and one-quarter of natural grass lands . Usable land may become less useful through salinization , deforestation , desertification , erosion and urban sprawl . Global warming may cause flooding of many of the most productive agricultural areas . Thus available useful land may become a limiting factor . By most estimates at least half of cultivable land is already being farmed and there are concerns that the remaining reserves are greatly overestimated . The UN indicates that about 850 million people are malnourished or starving and 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water .

                    There are several mitigation measures that have or can be applied to reduce the adverse impacts of over-population such as birth regulations , education , space invasion and settlement and making the most optimum use of the sea and reclamation of desert land , clean energy resources etc.